Down To Earth

Editorial. Sunita Narain
X. I. XIV

The myth of green
building

by Sunita
Narain

There is no question that India and other
parts of the still-under-construction world must
build green. The building sector is a major
contributor to climate change and local
environmental destruction because of construction
materials used; energy expended for lighting,
heating and cooling; and water consumption and
waste discharge. This is the threat. There is an
opportunity as well. Most of India is still
unbuilt—over 70 per cent of the building
stock is yet to be constructed—so unlike the
rest of the already developed world, India can
build anew in efficient and sustainable manner.
But how?

This is an issue that
has been troubling us at the Centre for Science
and Environment. Over the past few years the idea
of green buildings has gained
popularity—everybody, it would seem, has
turned a new leaf. Across the country large and
small constructions are advertised as the greenest
of green. To prove that they are indeed
environment-friendly, the business of
certification has also grown. There are agencies
that now rate and award stars to individual
buildings based on certain parameters. Many state
governments are making these same standards of
“greenness” mandatory. Some are even
providing incentives, like exemptions on property
tax, to those buildings that qualify as
environment-friendly. All this is important
but do we know what green means?

When we began asking
this question, what surprised us was the hostility
with which it was received. Nobody wanted the new
God to be questioned. Nobody wanted to be asked
something as simple as what the post-commissioning
performance of a green building was. We realised
that the interests—of architects, builders,
auditors and certifiers—in this new industry
were already entrenched. It was a cozy club and
nobody was keen to give us entry.

We dug in our heels.
Buildings are the key to a cleaner and greener
future. The building sector uses, already, some 40
per cent of the country’s electricity
generation. So, every effort made to reduce energy
intensity of buildings will go a long way. We
wanted to know what was happening and what more
could be done to reduce the material-use footprint
and emissions of every construction.

What we discovered is
not a convenient truth. My colleagues have put
together a book, Building Sense: Beyond the Green
Façade of Sustainable Habitat, to bust some
myths and explore alternative approaches. What
they find is as follows.

First, the general
approach is to build wrongly and then
“fit” in the green features. For
instance, glass-enveloped buildings are certified
green, simply because they install double or
triple insulating glass or five-star
air-conditioners to cool places that were first
heated up deliberately.

Secondly, rating systems
are being pushed through government and municipal
schemes without any evidence that green-certified
buildings are actually working. Data on the
performance of the green buildings after they have
been commissioned was, till very recently, not
disclosed. So, even though rating agencies say
that green-certified buildings save between 30 per
cent and 50 per cent of the energy and reduce
water consumption by 20-30 per cent, they have no
corroborating data.

Thirdly, all these
so-called green technologies end up hiking costs
to the extent that buildings become unaffordable
to most. What India needs are building standards
that are appropriate and cost-effective. Green
architecture should not be a barrier to inclusive
growth.

This is where old
knowledge has a role to play. Traditional
architecture is based on the principle of
“localising” buildings so that they
can optimise natural elements and be efficient in
resource use. This “science and art”
of engineers for nature needs to be infused with
the new material knowledge of modern
architecture.

Many architects,
engineers and builders are innovating with this
old-new science. That’s how the knowledge
and practice of affordable and sustainable
buildings will evolve. But big builders will adopt
it only if and when the façade of green
buildings is lifted. This is what we hope to
do.